


memories of blind milk

by madanach



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: COUNTER/Weight - Freeform, Gen, Mild Gore, Mindfuck, Other, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-15 06:01:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11224815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madanach/pseuds/madanach
Summary: The mesh is Mako’s home, and it is haunted.





	memories of blind milk

None of it is tangible until the Institute, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. A shimmer out of the corner of his eye, the illusory promise of water on hot asphalt.

Mako is four, waddling in his new foster family’s dusty backyard, getting used to the big pine trees and the short grass and the cavernous sky. He reaches towards the bright shining thing with a child’s instinct and the mirage turns into a flood.

 

Benji, who shares her room with him and has skin the color of sand, leans over his shoulder and frowns. “That’s not right.”

“What’s not right?”

“A panther is either a cat or a lot of birds. It can’t be just one bird.”

Mako puts the pencil into his mouth and bites, tasting the flaking paint. He doesn’t have space to draw more birds, and he doesn’t think cats can fly. He lets the damp pencil fall back into his hand and experimentally adds another bundle of feathers next to the first. It doesn’t look right.

There’s a _whump_ next to him as Benji jumps over the back of the couch, settling next to him. “What is it?”

Mako points with the eraser at the clumsy bundle underneath the panther. “That’s you.” In the background, he draws a dot. He’ll make it bigger once he figures out if it’s a cat or not. “That’s me.”

“Hmm.” Benji presses her lips into a pout like she does when she’s thinking. “Did Mom say that babies are brought by panthers?”

Mako hums, adding another bird next to the original. Good, it’s a panther again.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Benji says.

Mako looks over at her. She’s smiling a bit, like she’s going to trick him. He shakes his head. “No secrets.”

“C’mon, please? It’s a good one,” she says, and tugs at Mako’s ear where he’s ticklish. He yelps, and tries to be mad at her, but he can’t.

“Okay,” he says. “What’s the secret?”

“I’ve got a mom ‘cause I come from a panther,” she says. “And you’ve got an aunt ‘cause you come from a jar.”

“A jar?” Mako says. That’s really gonna ruin his picture.

Benji nods solemnly, like she does when she’s entrusting him with something she’s sure he’s too young to know. “A whole row of ‘em.”

“Hm.” Mako tries to imagine himself as a baby, curled up and covered in glass. Maybe that’s why he’s blue.

He scratches out the bird in the background. Benji sticks her arm behind his neck and tugs him into a hug. “It’s okay,” she tells him. “Lots of people come from jars.”

“Good,” Mako says. That’s pretty cool. Maybe those people are blue too. 

 

September is patchy, but so was everything before it, so Mako doesn’t mind. He has a tremendous amount of fun in the woods with Benji, stepping through dry crackling pine needles, looking for little brooks. She’s older so she gets to orchestrate, drawing out missions with sticks in the dirt — _you go here. I’ll go there_ — and laughs her big sister’s laugh when he gives her a thumb’s up from his assigned hiding spot, calls, _I love it when a plan comes together!_

They hunt, like that, in the woods, tiptoeing and whispering, and Mako holds a finger up to his lips when he catches the creature creeping behind them, skinny and insectile but not big enough yet for him to crawl inside.  

 

Mako is six. It’s his first year as a student at the Institute, and they have just put something small and automatic into the hollow at the back of his head. It hurts a bit, a twinge of a pinch, and he rolls his neck to test out the feeling, the way it clips at his skin and rubs gently against something stiff at the base of his skull.

He looks over at the mechanic, who sets down the tweezers next to her clinician’s gloves and smiles at him. “Okay. What now?”

She laughs. She must do this a lot but he supposes it is kind of funny, his twisted up mouth and his eyes all out of focus. She seems pretty young.

“I’m sorry,” she says, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth. He can see her lips still smiling behind it, lipsticked-up and perfect. “It’s just — I had that expression on my face too.”

She reaches to tie her hair up as she turns to the sink and he squints, looking for a tell on her neck or her spine, but he can’t spot it. When she turns on the faucet, something blinks, and he recoils.

“Uhhh,” Mako says. Was that supposed to happen?

“You can touch it now,” she says, washing her hands. “The mesh. You get used to it. It’s like riding a bike.”

She turns back to him. “Do you know how to ride a bike?”

Mako shakes his head.

“That’s fine. It’s like breathing.”

“The mesh?”

“Yeah.”

Mako says, “Huh.” So that’s what it’s called.

 

The September Institute is way bigger than the collective where Mako’s foster family lives, and more impressive. He’s captivated by the sleek uniform they give him and the way he looks in the gaggle of students who wait outside their commencement, their strange color-coordinated mass undulating in the mirrored ceiling as they nervously whisper to each other. 

It hurts his neck, twisting his head up to look, but it’s so pretty he can’t pull himself away. That’s why he almost trips when the kid next to him nudges him. He looks at them first in the hanging mirror, a small curly-haired dot with pink shoulders, before looking down.

“Cool,” Mako whispers. “You’re in RoseMoon too.”

His neighbor nods. “How much longer do we wait?” he whispers back.

Mako shrugs. “Dunno. Hey, what’s your name?”

“Oh!” the kid says, still whispering. His eyes are big and wide. “Sorry! My sister says I’m rude. Hi, I’m Tower.”

Mako grins. “My sister says I’m rude too! I’m Mako.” He sticks out his hand, because he’s seen it in holovids and he’s never gotten to shake someone’s hand before.

Tower takes it just as the crowd of kids begins to move around them, the wide doors creaking open. They whisper all through the ceremony, but that’s fine. Word gets around later: Maryland September was supposed to speak, but she didn’t even bother to show up.

 

They have classes on all sorts of things, but Mako knows, and all of his teachers know, that he’s wasted on anything that isn’t the mesh. He takes to it with a spark that he’s too young to realize none of the others really show. With both hands, he traces the 3D construct of the world around him, not bothering to keep his vivid colors between the lines.

The curriculum is heavily structured. For safety, they say, which is why they have a supervisor sit next to Mako in Systems, jotting notes on her tablet as he knocks down the tower of a firewall and rebuilds it, blocks overlapping as they interlock.

She points to his castle, asking questions. Mako gets distracted by her shining rings but dutifully answers, and when she’s not looking, he takes the diamond from her forefinger and puts it all the way up at the top of the tower, shining like a beacon.

Apparently that’s not very funny. She tuts crossly, deselects it, and writes down another note. 

Mako screws up his nose, watches it blink out of existence. The supervisor says he was making too much noise.

 

Benji comes to visit, once. She says that she likes her school, the smaller one near their collective where you can learn a trade. She says that it took ages to get on the list to come see him. She pops her gum and says that Mako needs to remember to write because they might not let her in anymore.

 

Mako moves up to the upper school at September a few years early, nine years old and bored to death in the hallway outside Twelfth’s office. There are strict rules about mesh use while interacting with administrators but he peeks in every so often, watching Twelfth sift through boring communications at his boring desk waiting to take Mako into this boring meeting.

Time moves too slow, but he doesn’t know how to help it along yet so he has to wait, kicking his heels against the uncomfortable chair, until Twelfth cocks his head and the door clicks open, pops out in welcome. Mako pouts and hauls himself to his feet, slipping out of the mesh until the walls disintegrate into opaque plaster. He peers around the door.

Twelfth waves a hand. “Come in, Mako Trig.”

“Hi,” Mako says. He lingers in the doorway for a second, uncertain, and then bites his lip and nudges the door closed with a synthetic push as he sits down. Twelfth doesn’t seem to notice the activation, and Mako wonders if he can even sense it, as small as his fingerprints are in the mesh right now.

Twelfth has the voice of a headmaster: hard, imperious, and enunciated to the point of pain. He says, “I hear you are a very clever boy.”

“Who said that?” Mako says. “I mean. Thank you. I think I’m clever.”

Twelfth raises an eyebrow.

“Thanks,” Mako says again. He doesn’t really know how this goes. His feet don’t touch the floor in this chair and it’s stupid but it makes him feel like a child, even though he’s nine and he’s going to the upper school next year and also, he’s apparently a very clever boy. “Thank you, Headmaster,” he corrects, in case he wasn’t polite enough.

“We have some ideas,” Twelfth says. “For your development.”

Mako’s heart sinks. 

“Think of it as an experiment,” Twelfth says, just as the door creaks open. Not in the mesh, in real life. It makes Mako jump.

Twelfth shrinks in his seat like he’s afraid, and says in his headmaster voice, but trembling a bit, now: “Mako, don’t turn around.”

Mako blinks. He turns around.

In the doorway is a man he doesn’t know yet, tall and pretty and well-dressed, the side of his cheek and neck flaking with dried blood.

The man looks at him with dead eyes. “You’re not here yet. Go.”

Mako frowns. “That’s not your line.”

He smirks, wry and lifeless. “Isn’t it?”

Mako stands up, approaches him. He feels very small, in this body, at this age, like he should for some reason be grown. He tilts his chin up to talk to Paisley, the pretty man with the loaded gun.

“You’re supposed to tell me I’m very brave.”

Paisley tucks his gun back into his belt and kneels down to eye level. He reaches out a hand and ruffles Mako’s hair.

“You’re very brave,” he says, his voice hollow and echoing.

Mako blushes deep red and slips out of the room, listening to the fading clatter of gunshots as he walks down the hallway and presses a hand to where Paisley had brushed his forehead, tries to keep himself from giggling.

 

The upper school’s a bit of a bummer because he doesn’t see Tower as much, but Mako makes new friends quickly. His new roommate’s name is Mandate, a sweet shy kid with braids in their hair who helps him move in. Golda, next door, helps him get to class, and Roy, her roommate, puts a finger to his lips when he shows him which ones are easy to skip. 

His favorite subject is Geometry but all of them fold out in front of him, feeling ripe for exploration. He’s good at them, too, gets good grades and tests well without sweating it. He can tell his teachers are impressed.

Like breathing, they said.

 

He turns ten, then eleven, then twelve.

  
****

Teddy, who is blond and friendly and clumsy, almost knocks Mako over between classes. He pushes a folded piece of paper into Mako’s hands and grins. “Hey, look at this.”

“Huh.” Mako steps back into his balance and holds out the brochure in front of him, watching the colorful filtered sheen of it dance in the light. “Why’s it paper?”

Teddy shrugs. “Beats me.”

Mako turns on his mesh, trying to see if there’s anything special about it, but it kinda just looks like paper. “Weird. Who’s—“ he squints. “Cassander?”

“Hot shit on Apostolos, apparently,” Teddy says. “Turn it over.”

Mako does. It’s weird — it’s like he’s seen it before.

“They’re like, a fish.”

“Yeah!” Teddy says. “Cool, right?”

 

The lecture’s on something boring — medical history, Mako thinks, and they get restless within minutes and sneak out. Mako ditches Teddy in the lobby and clambers in through the back door with the busted lock at the rear of the stage, the one big and wide enough for the shuttles to unload theater sets. 

There’s not much going on backstage. Mako can hear the dull staticky hum of the microphone as the lecturer talks, the polite rustle of the upperclassmen sitting bored in the audience.

He finds a ladder up to the rigging of one of the lights and climbs up halfway, just enough to see the speaker over the draping curtains.

Gray-haired, suit stiff and pressed, Cassander looks sedate. He has the patient blink of a professor, not an inch of tension in his jaw. Mako hears Apostolos in his voice, but only barely — it sounds like he trained it out.

He’s too old. His hands creak as he gestures, an age Mako never saw him reach.

Mako screws his eyes shut. The déjà vu itches like a mosquito bite.

Cassander finishes his lecture, and the students in the crowd clap. Mako can’t remember a single word he said.

As Cassander heads backstage, folding and refolding his antiquated paper notes, Mako climbs down from the rigging and follows him, just a few steps behind, hiding in the folds of the heavy velvet curtains. The floor creaks.

Cassander turns around. “Hello?”

Mako reaches out to push aside the curtain, and the mesh flashes.

[ERROR: DUPLICATE FILE. ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO OVERWRITE?]

Mako pulls back his hand and stays very, very still until Cassander leaves.

 

He’s got a good gang going: Mandate and Golda and Maritime from BlueWorld, Tower now that he’s in their classes again, Teddy whenever he bothers to pop around. It’s weird, though. He feels like it’s missing something.

 

As the winter grows cold prom grows immiment, and Mako thanks his lucky stars that he doesn’t have to mess with a costume: House BlueWorld pulled some strings and got Aria Joie to perform, and that’s all anyone can talk about. 

She’s in her late twenties now, Aria is, but she looks the same as she did when she sang at Joypark when they were little, back when there wasn’t a bigger name in the universe. Mako stands on the bleachers at the back of the gymnasium to hear her sing. She raises her hands, one flesh and one shining metal, and calls out to the screaming crowd.

“Pretty good for prom,” Mako says to Mandate, just before something pokes him in the side. He turns, then realizes he’s standing on the bleachers, kneels down to see who’s standing beside them.

“Hey, Aria,” Mako says. “What’s up? Shouldn’t you be on stage?”

Aria shrugs. Her hair is doing the braided poofy thing that always impresses him, even when they’re out on jobs, though it’s not as precise as it will be once she’s grown. She reaches a skinny teenage hand out to Mako and swats at his foot. “Probably. I’m looking for Jacqui.”

“Why aren’t you dressed up?”

Aria looks down at her BlueWorld uniform, freshly ironed, not a tuck or a fold out of place. “Oh. I’m not sure, actually. I just got here.”

Mako nods. “I guess if the other Aria dressed up you’re probably fine. I haven’t seen Jacqui, sorry.”

“Oh well,” Aria shrugs. “I’ll keep looking.” She shoves her shoulder into the crowd at her side, and just before disappearing, turns back to Mako with a wicked grin. “You should check out this singer, though. I hear she’s pretty good.”

Mako calls after her, “Jeez, I’m sorry I torrented your EP!”

He turns back to the stage where the hologram sings, so lifelike she could have been real.

Aria winks at him the next day in Advanced Mechanics and sends him a link to her Soundcloud. The front page of the school paper flashes _ARIA JOIE BLOWS SEPTEMBER AWAY_.

 

The next week, WhiteStar admits their new class. Mako is the only one in first period to raise his hand so he gets to show around one of the quiet Apostolisian kids, their day-one nametag still clinging for life to their blazer.

“Hey, Cass,” Mako says. “There you are.”

Cass wrinkles their nose. “The shuttle was late,” they say, fifteen and nervous and new. 

 

Work study kinda sucks, but Mako likes to people-watch and Maritime likes to tell stories so in the slow period during class they sit on the counter and point out the window and give the tour group attendees names. Mako likes it as a guessing game — he can zoom in a bit and read their nametags, giving himself points if he got the right letter or number of syllables — but Maritime thinks that ruins the fun. She says, “Tall dude. Grumpy.”

“Avery.”

“Juniper.”

“Orth.”

She whistles. “Ooh, I like Orth. Okay. Occupation.”

“Definitely a spy.”

“He looks like a librarian.”

“What? No way.” Mako leans forward to look and almost falls off the counter. Maritime hauls him back by the collar. “Spy.”

“Ehhh. Maybe a soldier. But like, a boring one.”

“I’ll put you down for spy,” Mako says. “Okay, lady next to him. The buff one.”

“She kills people for a living.”

“Damn. That was too easy.” He picks up one of the complimentary candies from the bowl by the cash register and bites into it, grinning when the sound makes Maritime wrinkle her nose. “Alright, next to her.”

“No robots, remember?” Maritime says. “They’ve all got shitty names like Automated Dynamics. Or Jim.”

“J-m.”

“You don’t pronounce the hyphen.”

“Really?”

“When do you ever pronounce the hyphen in anything?”

Mako sucks on his mint. She’s got a point.

Maritime elbows him. “I’ve got one,” she says, and points at the pretty man drinking his coffee quietly in the corner of the shop, luckily out of earshot. “What’s _his_ name?”

Mako looks down at his feet, kicking against the counter. One of his shoelaces is untied. “I don’t know that yet.”

“That’s a lie. You’re blushing.”

“I said I don’t know yet.”

He can feel Maritime looking at him. “That’s weird,” she says.

“What’s weird?”

“You’re normally bad at keeping secrets.”

Mako looks up just as the tour group moves on by, the last straggler passing out of his line of sight. “That’s not what it is.” 

 

They should be studying for midterms. 

“Aw, man.” Tower throws the controller at Mandate’s bed. He doesn’t need it but it’s a nice tactile thing so Mako rigged it up in his third year, and Tower loves that shit: the little buttons, the triggers, the joystick. Mako frowns at the controller as it clunks against the floor and then tries to look behind him, frowns at Tower’s elbow hanging over his bed. “You got me killed.”

“No, I didn’t,” Mako says, indignant. He shoves himself up to his knees. Tower’s got an arm flung over his eyes and he peeks out at Mako from underneath it, raising an eyebrow in inquiry. Mako pokes his leg. “Dude, I was trying to help.”

“Were you?” Tower says. “You’re bad at it.”

Mako sits back on his heels. “Come on. I danced with you.”

“Yeah. And now I’m dead.”

Tower flicks his finger at the mesh. The game clicks back on.

He gets a notification that he’s got a visitor later that night, when the sky is already crawling into evening and he’s lazily settled in bed. For a while he just frowns at the alert, making it dance across his ceiling and watching the pixels blur. Then he feels bad, so he gets up and puts on pants.

Tower rolls over and blinks, squinting at the brightness of the mesh. “Shit. How long was I asleep?”

“Since you died for like, the ninth time,” Mako says. “Go back to sleep. I gotta go deal with this.”

Tower frowns. “How long are you gonna be gone?”

Mako can hear the sleep in his voice. “Right back, I promise.” He cracks open the door, the harsh fluorescent lights spilling in.

“Mmkay,” Tower says, doubtful, but he’s already laying his head back down.

“I promise, man,” Mako repeats. He shoves his bare feet into his shoes and slips out into the hallway.

He follows the notification down into the courtyard, past the Student Affairs building and all the way to the small gatehouse with its weird empty visitor’s room, where the people go who can’t afford to be escorted. The light’s on but he can’t see anyone inside, and he waves his hand across the doorknob, coaxes the crochety mechanism into creaking open. 

He sticks his head in. “Hello?”

No answer. The alert is gone. He checks his email — nothing.

“Anyone home?” Mako calls. He steps into the room, and yawns, but when he raises his hand to stifle it there’s a skip, the absentminded connection of a loop starting over. 

Mako reaches out to bring it back to him, and as he does it rushes backwards, harried and madcap in its effort to show him the girl who had been sitting there hours earlier, tapping her feet and popping her gum and waiting in reverse motion. Her yawning is his but mirrored, a snap open and a slow deflation as her mouth shuts.

Mako says, “Why do you look so familiar?” and his voice is backwards, monstrous.

She can’t hear him, and he doesn’t know how to stop rewinding. He sits at the table opposite her and brings his knees up to his chest, and by the time he wakes up the sun is shining soft early morning light and she is long gone.

 

Mako is surprised when he walks outside and sees Cass, perched on the edge of the fountain and staring at the campus wall like they’re trying to bore a hole in it. They start when Mako sits down next to them, worrying at their bottom lip with their teeth.

Trying to be helpful, Mako says, “Dude, you’re gonna fail the midterm tomorrow.”

Cass frowns at him. “What? No, man. I gotta go do something in the forest.”

“The forest?” Mako says. “What’s out there?”

“Remember that square on the map we didn’t investigate?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I guess we shoulda investigated it.”

“Huh,” Mako says.

They sit for a silent moment. Cass kicks their legs out in front of them, their regulation uniform hems tugging up their ankles. They’re growing too quickly for their clothes to keep up.

“You want a slurpee?” Mako asks, holding out the blue raspberry he’d snatched from the cafeteria. He should have thought to get a second one, but it’s fine. They can share.

Cass looks up and blinks like they’d forgotten something. “Yeah,” they say after a second. “I’ll try it.”

 

Springs are good. It never really gets hot on September but Mako loves the brush of the warming breeze and the blooming green shade of the off-world trees they keep in cages on the school grounds.

With it, spring brings a shadow cast overhead, a cloud or a shuttle that Mako can never track to its source.

 

In the fifteen minutes between Symmetrical Equations and Second-Generation Calc, Mako’s best subject, Maritime’s worst:

“I dunno,” Maritime says. “I think I get game theory as like, a concept, but all that Pusher One and Pusher Two and union bullshit—“ and then Mako gets distracted by Aria, face bloodless and mouth open in a soundless _oh_ , wearing the dopest dress he’s ever seen.

He turns around to interrogate her on it, but she’s not there. The hallway’s empty. It’s a shortcut, he knows, but not that short, right?

“Aria?” he says. “Yo, Aria?”

No answer. He twists back around. 

“Mako.” Maritime turns to face him but keeps walking, her balance pitch-perfect. She says. “You’re gonna be late again.”

“Yeah, I know,” Mako says, frowning. “Hang on a sec. I have to find Aria.”

“Who’s Aria?”

“Aria auditioned with you, and then she was a super famous pop star at Joypark, and now she’s here,” Mako says absentmindedly. “You sure you didn’t see something?”

Maritime frowns. “I’m definitely sure. Do you need to get your connection checked?”

“No, no,” Mako says, waving her away, and as he flicks his hand time scrolls, speeding up and then slowing, like two trains going in opposite directions seeing each other momentarily run backwards. Maritime disappears, and he can’t find her again, but he can’t find Aria, either. 

 

For Synthetic Geometries they have to build bridges. Mako’s is a curving truss, which he’s technically not supposed to do, but whatever. He has to sneak out to the woods to test it, though, because he shouldn’t bring the weights into the project rooms.

It looks good, glittering between the trees. Mako can stand up on his tiptoes and touch the bottom at the crest of the curve. It stings his fingers, a bit, but that means it’s firm.

All he brought out was a bag of popcorn, and he gets preoccupied with eating, so he’s sitting up against a tree stacking the weights into increasingly delicate skyscrapers and stuffing his face when Teddy kicks him in the back.

Mako yelps and spills popcorn everywhere. Light pulses onto the mess he’s made, a violet that turns into pink that turns into yellow. 

“Whoops,” Teddy says. “My b.” He steps into Mako’s field of vision, so Mako can see the truly terrible outfit he’s wearing.

Mako blinks. He’s got a whole new thing going on. “What’s up with you?”

“System upgrade!” Teddy crows. His weird flashing grill spills out light onto his slurpee cup. “And it’s Ted now, fam. Lazer Ted.”

“Lazer with a Z?” Mako asks.

“You know it.”

“Cool.”

“Slurpee?”

“Sure.” Mako takes it, and then almost spits it out. It tastes like a pine tree. “Is that gin?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s gross.”

“Thanks.” Teddy — or Lazer Ted, whatever — looks up at the bridge, still shimmering pleasantly, then sits down directly underneath it, cross-legged. “Gimme a truck, bro.”

“It’s not done,” Mako says, but he clicks obligingly and a truck crunches down, hitting the beams of the mesh with the sound of metal warping. Mako marks the points where the bearings creak: they’ll grind together and collapse after a few minutes if he doesn’t reinforce the shock absorber. He flicks a finger and the truck disappears.

“You’re super smart, Mako,” Ted says. He snaps his finger and a construct climbs over the tree-tops, chemistry and metalwork. “Bet it won’t break.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Mako says.

Ted says, “Fist-bump!” He lifts his closed fist to the sky, a loose salute underneath Mako’s creaking homework, and the construct comes to meet him —

An irritated whine from the system, and Mako’s bridge sparks into dissapating pixels the second before it gets hit. Lazer Ted says, “Aw, man.”

The construct’s gone. Mako looks at where its silhouette had been just a second before, and says “Hey, buddy, don’t do that,” like an afterthought.

 

Mako turns sixteen. Cass and Aria give him a video game.

It’s a platformer, a real good vintage one, almost like the kind you’d play on a screen. There’s a whole gang of protagonists but Mako’s favorite is the customizable one, which snatches his voice as he opens the game and snarks its way through cutscene after cutscene. He speeds through the thing in a week, barely leaving his room. He gets stuck on the last level every time, like clockwork.

It’s an imbalanced, spindly boss fight with a weak spot in the crook of its limp right arm that Mako spends hours trying to beat, tangled up in his bedsheets and ignoring the call of the sunlight or his classes or the upcoming summer. He forgets to sleep or eat or drink, an end so close he can taste it.

His avatar gets swiped out of the sky with one plated metallic hand, an undignified death. Mako falls back into his pillows and groans loudly. The game, which tipped back with him, blinks, for the tenth time that day: _You Died. Try Again?_

Mako doesn’t fuck with it. He lets the boss linger in its idle animation, breathing heavily and stomping, his sad little dead guy sprawled in the foreground. 

Lazer Ted’s got cheat codes, right? There’s some way to beat it. He pouts at the empty room, a bit mad at himself for missing something obvious.

The boss reaches out its good arm and shoves the kill screen to the side, leans foward until its palm is sprawled on Mako’s chest. It takes its other hand and chips him under the chin.

< Y O U  S H O U L D  T R Y  C O - O P >

Mako rolls his neck away from it, scrunching up his nose. “I got this.”

< Y O U  D O N ‘ T  G O T  T H I S >

“I so do! The one harm doesn’t stack!”

< Y O U  A R E  G O I N G  T O  D I E >

“That’s so _rude_ ,” Mako says. He restarts the game.

 

Tower gets him to come back to class. Maritime makes sure he’s getting fresh air. Mako lets himself be dragged outside because, like Golda and Mandate and Roy keep reminding him, it’s spring. 

More often than not, he hangs out with Ted at his grimy new apartment, smokes weed and chimes in on entrepreneurial schemes and searches with languid, doped-up curiosity for a word on the tip of his tongue.

 

When Mako wakes up, it’s night, or something like it. Something’s knocking at the mesh insistently. Mako checks — six unread emails. 

       FROM: <c.t.berenice@whitestar.september.edu>

       SUB: LOOK OUTSIDE

       LOOK OUTSIDE

 

       FROM: <a.joie@blueworld.september.edu>

       SUB: LOOK OUTSIDE

       [ERROR: The body of mesh-mail cannot be blank.]

 

       FROM: <[AUTOMATED.DYNAMICS] [AT] [LIBERTY AND DISCOVERY] [DOT] [NET]>

       [ERROR: The subject of mesh-mail cannot be blank.]

       [ERROR: The body of mesh-mail cannot be blank.]

 

       FROM: <[ORTH: YOUR FRIEND?]>

       [ERROR]

 

       FROM: <[JACQUI: YOUR FRIEND?]>

       [ERROR]

 

       FROM: <000000000000000000>

       SUB: <000000000000000000>

       [ERROR: YOU HAVE TO LEAVE.]

The mesh knocks again, insistent, a rap at his window. Mako slides out of bed, tiptoeing so he doesn’t wake Mandate, and peers down. Two figures wave at him.

Mako opens the window. “Hey, guys!”

The rock Aria was throwing clatters against his windowsill, dropping back down to the ground. 

“Kinda late, isn’t it? What’s up with your arm?”

Cass looks at their side, where the marble is sliding up past their elbow. “That’s nothing. It’s some meta shit. Listen, we gotta go.”

“Aria, what’s that sword?”

Aria holds a buzzing saber, thick and sharp and bright, the size of her body but appearing almost weightless. “Don’t worry about it,” she says. “Come on down, Mako.”

“Why?” Mako says. “I was sleeping.”

“It wants to make you its candidate,” Aria says, and Cass turns and salutes with their strange marble arm to the encroachment of the sun upon the horizon, and Mako looks and sees the colossus, organic and mechanic and horror, crawling towards him.

 

“I’ll be fine, right?” Mako says. 

He sees himself, thin and insignificant, hovering over the beast.

“I think I can do it,” he says again.

Lazer Ted is cradling the biggest bong Mako’s ever seen in his life. He says, “Dude. Can you do, like, anything?”

Mako’s stoned too, but he’s not that stoned. “Uh, yeah. I can do a ton of stuff.”

“Can you, though?”

“Yo, Ted,” Mako says. “You should smoke less weed.”

“It’s all chance, man,” Lazer Ted says. He sounds super wise but Mako knows he’s just really high. “Shit just — it happens.”

Mako exhales, watching the smoke swirl up to the ceiling all funny. “Is it? Like, come on. I’ve seen movies. The good guys win.”

“That’s a lie,” Lazer Ted says, full of drug-fueled conviction. “Fam, that’s what EarthHome wants you to believe.”

“Oh shit.” Mako rolls over on the couch and stares at Lazer Ted accusingly. He thinks that’s the expression he’s making, at least. “Are you like, one of those conspiracy theorists? Do you think we’re all controlled by one dick in a glass office in a bad suit?” He points a finger. “Do you think the Rapid Evening exists?”

“The Rapid Evening are super real and they super have a divine named Badass,” Lazer Ted says solemnly. “That’s not the point. Homie, it’s dice rolls.”

“That’s a lie,” Mako sniffs, rolling back over onto his back. “I have—”

He loses the word for a second.

“I have autonomy.”

That’s it.

“Yeah?” Lazer Ted says. “You think?”

Mako stares up at the smoke on the ceiling, parting like clouds. For a second he thinks he sees space and stars and sky, and then he realizes that he’s really high and those are mold spots.

“Fuck you, Ted,” Mako says. “Gimme the Mountain Dew.”

 

In the streets between Ted’s place and campus the mesh shrieks like a gunshot. Mako takes off running, so much longer and further than he has stamina for, crumpling to the ground inside the gate despite the soft dampness of rain and pressing both trembling hands to his belly, where his skin is smooth and untouched.

Another Mako lifts his hands in tandem and they are stained deep, dark red.

The feedback loops die in perfect repeating time and Mako reaches out, gore-soaked, watches the world flinch away.

 

“Mako, come on. We have a midterm.”

Mako has his mesh turned off. The blindness is reassuring “No,” he says, loud enough that Maritime can hear.

“No?” she says incredulously. “What are you talking about, no?”

“No,” Mako says. He presses his toes to the wall next to his bed. The crumbling stucco comes away dusty white. His room looks like shit like this.

Maritime says, “We have a midterm.”

They always have a midterm.

Mako says, raising his voice enough that the whole floor can hear it crack, “Shouldn’t it be summer by now?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Go away,” he tells her, after a second.

Silence.

“Are you okay?” says another voice. It’s Aria. 

“Fuck off.”

Another pause.

“Hey, come out,” says Cass.

He listens. He tries so hard to be still. He can’t hear any of them whisper, or move, or breathe.

“Mako,” the voice says, whatever it is.

Mako feels sick with the knowledge that he should have figured it out by now.

He closes his eyes and concentrates. When he opens them, the mesh is reskinned and closing in, comfortably claustrophobic, old worn metal walls like the closet of a ship.

 

       MAKO TRIG [ID: MT12 18-9-7-15-18]

       SPRING TERM <YEAR REDACTED>

 

       Synthetic Geometries — 72%

       Advanced Mechanics — 58%

       Second-Generation Calculus — [Incomplete: Exam Missing]

       Theory And Implementation Of Firewalls During The Indeterminate Alloy Period (Pass/Fail) — F

       Symmetrical Equations — 43%

       Intramural Tennis — 90%

 

       TERM AVERAGE: <ADMINISTRATOR OVERRIDE>

       CONGRATULATIONS MX. TRIG

       PLEASE FIND ATTACHED YOUR CERTIFICATE OF ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

 

They release him. He leaves. He doesn’t know. It’s something like that — some sudden upheaval, something he didn’t expect to have to go through or get away with. It’s quick, in Twelfth’s office. It’s a cumulation of factors presenting an obvious solution. It’s the natural progression of things.

Mako shoves away his mesh, stomping through the hallways in all of their ugly, uncovered disarray. He realizes that he is viciously angry. 

He pulls off his tie roughly, drops it in the archway of the Academic Affairs Office as he slams the door. His jacket is left on the stairway down, the one that looks like pretty marble in the mesh and reveals its true nature as concrete the minute he clicks it off. He fights with the buttons of his shirt, storming past the fountain, and he can’t get the hems open. They feel like shackles, not fabric but metal. 

It won’t fit over his wrist unless he tears it. He lets out a cry of frustration and yanks. The thread snaps.

That’s what they were saying to him, in those horrific fucking artificial rooms. He didn’t know it then but he knows it now, leaving a trail like shedding a skin. He doesn’t have the discipline for it. He doesn’t have the rigor. 

The torn shirt slips from his shoulders and sails to the ground. 

At the gate, they catch him.

“Mako,” someone says. They say his name. He turns and the fury, the fervor drains out of him like it was never there. Cass and Aria stare at him, wide-eyed.

He realizes how stupid he looks, shivering in his undershirt in the spring air, seventeen years old and only now naming injustice. He has the harsh, nauseating urge to plead forgiveness.

Aria looks truly, genuinely distraught. “You’re just going to leave us here?”

There is a crease growing between Cass’ eyebrows, and Mako knows that that’s the look they get when they see the sniper but their targeting sight won’t catch on. 

The panic bubbles in his chest. 

“I’m not leaving you,” Mako rushes, a lackluster explanation. “I’m going to find you.”

“We can’t fight this thing alone,” Cass says. Mako bites his tongue as the marble crawls further up their arm, inching across their neck, solidifying the tight frightened twist of their mouth into stone.

He closes his eyes. 

“I’m going to find you,” he says, and he tries to say it firm. Like an anthem, or a prayer. “I’m going to find you.”

“We know you are,” Aria says, voice warm, and when he opens his eyes Cass is smiling. 

The mesh shudders the skin-shallow shiver of an animal shaking off a stubborn fly, and they’re gone.

Mako, already forgetting, turns and walks away.

**Author's Note:**

> you know in the september incident episodes when shit goes from "wacky and mildly unsettling" to "explicitly frightening, bordering on the horrific"? that's where i fucking live!
> 
> i’m [@anahaedra](https://twitter.com/anahaedra) on twitter, add me n talk to me abt Austin Walker’s Glitch Hell™
> 
> the title is from [robert montgomery](http://assets.coolhunting.com/coolhunting/2012/07/slideshow_montgomery-echoes-gal4.jpg)


End file.
